There's a reason you can't quite see Ency Rebecca Jamison Matthews' face in the photo that accompanies this story.

"That's a perfect representation of our mother because she always had binoculars up to her face looking for birds. You'd never see her. It fits," said son Dan Matthews.

Longtime readers of the News-Leader might remember Rebecca Matthews as the writer of some 400 "The Bird Watcher" and "Birdwatch" columns, which ran in the paper from 1971 until 2005. Matthews died Feb. 20 in Springfield. She was 98.

Dan Matthews said his mother wasn't always focused on birds.

"When we were kids, she'd take us on nature walks when spring arrived and would identify Jack-in-the-Pulpit and lily of the valley flowers, all the flowers we'd see along the way," he said. "All of us left home around 1968, and that's when she discovered birding."

She wrote for the local Audubon Society and eventually approached the News-Leader about writing a column about birds. Dan Matthews said she had an eloquent way of writing what she saw, and most of her columns were based on her own observations in the field.

Here are a few snippets from her work:

"The scissor-tailed flycatcher is a bird of beauty and grace. Its soft gray body with coral wing linings and black and white accents on its remarkably long tail make it a creature worthy of a long second look. Its courtship sky dance, as it flies upward, snipping the air with its scissor tail proclaims it as a free spirit. It belongs to the prairie. Its flycatcher name implies that it feeds on the wing, and even those insect-gathering flights as it swoops above flower and grass are a joy to watch."

"The sight of a majestic bald eagle, head and tail gleaming white in the sunlight as it soars in a sky of blue, is always a stirring sight. In the future we may be able to enjoy it all year around."

"I like the white-eyed vireo, too, because his song is so identifiable. “Tick!” he says. “Tick! Perk-a-wee-o. Tick!” He may sing anything he chooses in the middle, even imitate another bird, but at the beginning or end or both there is that distinctive sharp note."

She wasn't averse to reaching out to a higher power when the creative moment needed a nudge. She ended many of her columns with a prayer.

"Dear God, Have I thanked You for this lovely spot where I may go and walk and enjoy the birds and nature? I do thank You. And I thank You for helping me to write this story about my first experience there. As I wrote it I had in mind writing something I could use in the newspaper, breaking it in two, one about vireos and one about the park. Now I have done something with the vireos, but it is a hundred words too long. Will You help me choose which ones to leave out? Thank You, Lord, for listening; I know You always hear me. AMEN"

Dan Matthews said her voracious appetite for learning earned her an unusual name — Ency — from her brother and sister, "Ency was her mother's name, but the family was very poor and the only book they had was one encyclopedia," he said. "She so valued learning, and the name Ency, from encyclopedia, that's where it came from."

In a eulogy, he said his mother attended Southwest Missouri State Teachers College (now Missouri State University), "studying math and science in mostly male classes with a few friends who were gifted young women. Good teachers are good learners: as proof, at 13 she and another girl learned algebra on their own, working out of a textbook they found."

She earned a degree in teaching and taught at several one-room schools, including Mount Pisgah school outside of Springfield. She taught chemistry and biology at Willard High School, then found the job of a lifetime, teaching in the mathematics department at what was then Southwest Missouri State College. She taught at SMS from 1956 until 1983 when she retired with the title Emeritus Professor of Mathematics. During this time, she also earned her Master's of Science in Teaching from the University of Missouri.

In later years she was a well-known volunteer at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center and earned many awards from nature-oriented organizations. In 2006, she was honored by the Springfield Conservation Nature Center at an event called “The Becky Matthews Gala” at the age of 88.

Rebecca Matthews' funeral will be 2 p.m. Friday at the First Christian Church of Republic, 443 N. Main Ave., Republic. Burial will follow at East Lawn Cemetery in Springfield.

The family requested donations to a nature-related cause in lieu of flowers.